Driving School Brochure: Fill & Download for Free

There are several possible real reasons for a case like this, and dozens of contributing reasons. By law, the earliest any Japanese can get a driver's license is their 18th birthday. Virtually all Japanese graduate high school at age 18, so for at least part of their last year of high school, all Japanese are too young.It's technically possible to pass the written test and practical driving test without spending 300,000 yen (or more!) on driving school, but I've heard both of these tests described as a "kabuki dance"- maddeningly complex even though on the surface they seem simple enough. I passed my driving test only through the kind advice and dozens of caveats from the local driving school's owner. Even with over a quarter million miles' driving under my belt before I came to Japan, I was glad for every last bit of help. Not many 17 year old Japanese have the time and their own money to go through driving school. Also, I understand many Japanese fail the driving test the first time around, so they require more driving school, making it even less likely that they can get a license before finishing high school.Insurance is prohibitively expensive before age 20 in Japan, so it takes serious support from parents just to sit behind the wheel. And many testing officers will ask driving test takers about their school. Insufficient answers will prejudice them, effectively making it impossible to pass these "kabuki dances."The most likely reason, ignoring these formidable barriers for a moment, is that well over half of all Japanese high schools expressly forbid their students from getting a license before graduation. Most forbid their students from even asking for information at driving schools, and many driving schools cooperate with these school orders. If my HS had these restrictions in place, and I went in on a Friday evening to get a brochure on lesson times, costs, etc., my HS would probably have that information before Monday AM classes.There was a court case where a student sued a school to be reinstated after he was expelled under precisely these circumstances 23 or 24 years ago. He lost the case and could not appeal. There is no law prohibiting HS students from getting a license after their 18th birthdays, but pretty much everything except the law conspires against HS students. I believe the average age for first passing the driving test is 20 or 21, and the average for all Japanese adults getting a license is well after the 24th birthday.

That would be a book that no one would buy. But a pamphlet of “Do’s & Don’ts” for the prospective truck driver:Do: Take your time, make sure this is truly where your passion lies. This is a career decision not to be made lightly. At the very least, driving school will take a few years to pay off.Don’t: Accept at face value the promises in the ads for either the driving schools or trucking companies. They may not straight out lie, but they do put their organizations in the most positive light, telling you what you “can” earn, instead of telling you that the average reality is much more modest.Do: Visit truckstops and talk with some of the drivers. Ask a lot of questions about what their lifestyle is like. How long do they really work? How long are they away from home? How much time do they get to spend at home? How much do they really make, after taxes and expenses on the road? What do they wish someone had told them before they got started?Don’t: Rely on recruiters to tell you everything. Whether they work for the school or the trucking company, they are paid to bring people in. They are, quite literally, salesmen (for example: you are not “getting to see the country while getting paid for it”). Ask if they will provide you with the names and contact information of previous graduates. If they can’t/won’t, that’s a big red flag.Do: Search your possible options on the internet. You can find out a lot of information, for free, if you are willing to put in a little time and effort.Do: Google(tm) search for the driving school. Find out if they have any ties to the trucking companies (many do), find out if they have a decent job placement rate for graduates (it should be north of 90%), find out how much they cost compared to other schools in the area, find out how long and how involved their curriculum is (sometimes, it may be worthwhile to spend a little more on that 10 week school that offers housing and intensive classroom, yard and highway training than the cheaper 3–4 week course that barely qualifies you to pass the CDL exam and leaves you unprepared for the actual job).Do: The same goes for the companies you are interested in working for. Don’t rely on the advertising in the brochures at the driving school or the magazines at the truckstop. Each company sponsors their own website and each site has a link for “Investors”. Check it out. You don’t need to be a financial expert but a brief introduction into how to read a company’s annual report will enable you to get a good idea of their financial stability (how much debt they carry, annual revenue, fleet size, maintenance expenses, etc). Do a simple search for “<company name> complaints” and visit online trucker forums for the raw, unfiltered opinion of current and former drivers (keep in mind, a former driver’s opinion is almost always negative and that you have no idea of why they are a “former driver”, but if there are a multitude of the same negative comments……”if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck”)Don’t: Make any decisions until you have done at lease some of this due diligence. Getting into trucking isn’t like working in fast food or at the mall. You can’t just “try it out” for a few weeks and then quit if you don’t like it (unless you have thousands to waste on school and training just for the experience). It may seem like a lot of work (and it is) but it’s much preferable to going into something like this blindly and then finding out that the job really isn’t what you thought it would be, that being away from home for weeks at a time is harder than you thought, that your wife/husband & kids isn’t/aren’t as complacent with your absence as you believed.If, after all this you still have the desire to join the ranks of the millions of professional drivers who make this country work, welcome aboard!

Make sure you've read the NJMVC brochure, and, just to make sure, take a refresher course with a respectable driving instructor like my friend Will Reilly of the North Jersey Driving School Morris County. He knows what to expect from the examiners. Don't presume that you know everything!